There is an alarming message in a major new report on climate change, a draft of which the New York Times obtained on Tuesday.†The United Nationsí Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of leading scientists who review the latest and best available research, say we are dangerously close to the day when it will no longer be possible to limit global warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2.0 degrees Celsius) by mid-centuryósomething that world leaders have pledged to do.

Of course, the pledge might already be delusional, given that countries continue to burn fossil fuels at an unprecedented rate. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, emissions grew at 2.2 percent per year. Thatís nearly twice as much as they increased in the three decades that preceded it. And itís no secret why. While emissions have been slowing in industrialized countries, that hasnít offset the growth in emissions from China and India. The report also finds companies and countries are sitting on four times more of the fossil fuels than the world should be burning if it reasonably expects to keep the worst of global warming at bay. In other words, countries will have the opportunity to fill the atmosphere with way too many greenhouse gasesóthe question is whether they can somehow resist the temptation.